Rosanna Amaka

The Book of Echoes is a powerful and compelling story narrated in part by the spirit of an African slave who was murdered 200 years ago. In the present day a boy from Brixton and a girl from Lagos journey towards each other as they try to escape their pasts.

I thoroughly enjoyed this emotional and meaningful tale. It has some wonderful, realistic characters as well as being beautifully and vividly written. It contains themes of slavery and racial discrimination, these themes resonating throughout time, as the title suggests. It’s a thought provoking story, very pertinent to today’s world, a tale of adversity, hardship and survival, but ultimately it’s a story of hope and forgiveness. I can’t recommend it enough!… (altro)

The new decade has just begun when life as he knows it ends for 16-year-old Michael Watson: his mother is murdered in their home and he and his little sisters find themselves alone in Brixton. The person who always told him that people of Jamaican descend have to work two times as hard as others and should keep their head down is gone and it does not take too long until his mother’s concerns are proven right. Thousands of kilometres south in a small Nigerian village, Ngozi has to say goodbye to her mother and younger sisters, she is sent to town to work as a maid and earn money for the family. Two kids who hardly have anything in common except for the very poor and hard start in life. Yet, they are born fighters and in them, they carry the echo of decades of people who had to face a similar situation and also fought for their future.

Rosanna Amaka tells the two very different stories alternatingly, you switch from Thatcher London to chaotic Nigeria and even though the surrounds could hardly differ more, there are some parallels between Michael and Ngozi. It is obvious that their lives have to collide at one point, yet, much less obvious to answer is the question if they will succeed and escape the poor life they are born in.

I totally adored the story around Ngozi even though there is not much to adore in her life. The hardship of her family who does not know how to make ends meet, a father who ignores his kids and later the families who employ and exploit her. Born and raised in Europe, one cannot really imagine the life of a girl of her background:

“’Ngozi, as a woman there are some things we have no choice in,’ she says and gets up from her chair. (...) She goes to sleep and to cry over the innocence her daughter will lose.”

Young girls are the most vulnerable and those who can just take advantage of it. Her employer, the employer’s wife, white men coming to Africa who believe to be superior and to have the right to treat people there like goods – it is not just what they have to endure but also how they seem to accept this as a fact of life, just as Ngozi’s mother put it.

For me, it took a bit too long to bring the two parts together, admittedly, the end was also a bit too foreseeable and sweet. Each on its own works perfectly well and could have done without the other actually. Nevertheless, the novel is beautifully written and I totally enjoyed reading it.… (altro)

Chapter 1 of this powerful novel starts in London as the spirit narrator of the story revisits her traumatic experiences in the city’s West India Docks in 1803, and recalls the many horrifyingly brutal events which had led to her arrival, and subsequent death, there. In the late 1700s, as a young married woman, she had been captured from her village in Nigeria and sold into slavery on a Jamaican plantation but, having realised what was about to happen, had abandoned her baby son Uzo in the bush, desperately hoping that someone would find and save him before animals attacked him. A few years later, as she lay dying on the London quayside, she gave birth to a daughter. However, as the baby was immediately taken away, she never got to see her properly but remembers so clearly that she smelled of ginger and, like Wind, her father had a half-moon mark on the side of her face. Since that day more than two hundred years earlier she often hears the voices of both her children calling out to her, and her spirit continues to roam the world in search of them, and their ancestors.
Chapter 2 moves to Brixton in 1981 and introduces sixteen-year-old Michael, a Londoner of Jamaican descent whose world has just been turned upside down following the murder of his much-loved stepmother by his older brother. Needing to pay many outstanding bills as well as wanting to provide security for his eleven-year-old sister, Marcia, he realises that his part-time job at the supermarket won’t be enough and, even though he has dreams of a better life, he finds himself being inexorably drawn into a world of street riots, racial tensions, violence, drugs and drug-dealing.
In Chapter 5 the reader is introduced to eleven-year-old Ngozi, a young Nigerian girl from Obowi, the same village from which the spirit-mother had been taken. The eldest of four children being brought up in poverty in a single-parent family, both she and her mother are keen that she should seek out opportunities which will enable her to make a better life for herself. So, as her story starts, she is about to move to the city, where she will work as a maid to a wealthy family. She will be able to earn money to send home, but will also be given the opportunity to continue with her education. Although she is sad to be moving away from her family and friends, and is fearful of what awaits her in a place so far from home, she knows this is what she must do if she is to have any chance of a better life.
Through the observations of the spirit-mother the reader follows the lives of these two main characters as they face challenge after challenge in their individual journeys towards a better future and to the moment when their paths eventually cross. However, the narrative not only follows the present-day characters, but the voice of the spirit also reflects on her own horrific experiences after she was enslaved and on all the things which have changed in the world since she was alive, as well as those which haven’t.
I found this a beautifully written, thought-provoking, elegiac and very moving story, one which immediately drew me into the lives of each of the characters and made me reflect on how early experiences, as well as long-lasting echoes from the past, influence how people live their lives. There were moments when I felt tearful about the challenges and traumas Michael and Ngozi experienced as they faced racism, prejudice and bigotry during their journey from childhood to adulthood. However, I also felt anger as I reflected on the fact that although there are so many ways in which conditions and opportunities in the twenty-first century are better than they were forty years ago, for a poor black person living in either London or a small village in Nigeria, significant prejudice remains to reduce their opportunities in myriad ways.
Through Michael the author explored issues such as racial tension in communities, knife-crime, gang warfare, drugs, being the target of often unwarranted attention from the police, some of the specific challenges which faced young black men during the 1980s but which, rather depressingly, feel all too recognisable in the twenty-first century. She also explored how the increasing gentrification of parts of London pushed up house prices, with the result that traditional communities were broken up, local people were unable to afford to remain where their roots were and the gap between the “haves and have nots” grew ever-wider, creating yet more tension … a problem which has certainly become worse rather than better in the intervening years!
Through Ngozi some of the themes explored included the reflections on a society where women are subjected to many forms of abuse, where they all too often bear the burden of bringing up a family single-handed whilst too many men abdicate responsibility, the continuing dominance of white men in positions of power reflecting ongoing echoes of colonisation and also providing opportunities for them to abuse that power. At one point in the story Ngozi reflects on her relationship with Mr McDonald, a white businessman, and remarks that over the years her country has seen a lot of Mr McDonalds, often bringing death and destruction and sometimes creating new life with local women before returning to their own family in the West. The author also used Ngozi’s story to reflect on the fact that well-educated Nigerians are often forced to emigrate because there are too many with degrees who find it impossible to get a well-paid job, making it hard to earn enough to feed themselves, let alone support a family. Yes, there has been progress but, for far too many, huge challenges continue to exist and opportunities remain limited.
Although the consequences of past traumas continue to reverberate through the generations and we need to understand their impact, they do not need to define what happens in the present. The story explores how a sense of self and self-worth is dependent on embracing your ancestral and cultural legacy and of understanding its importance. It demonstrates how hard it is to escape stereotypical expectations and yet through both main characters the author shows that, even when it feels as though the fight for survival, let alone progress, is never-ending, that prejudice and suspicion are ever-present, it’s important, even when despairing about the obstacles still to be overcome, to be able to hang onto the hope that a better future is possible. From the powerful empathetic ways in which the author used her narrative voice, there were times when I felt almost that I was living inside the skins of her characters, feeling their heartbreaks, their despair but also their hope, and their determination, in the face of all the odds, to succeed and create a better life for themselves.
This is truly remarkable debut novel, a haunting story which is told with searing passion and eloquence and is, in my opinion, one which should garner critical acclaim. Apart from being a very satisfying personal read, with the many issues it raises, it would make an ideal choice for book groups.
With thanks to NB and the publisher for the uncorrected proof copy I was sent in exchange for an honest review.… (altro)